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Updated: May 2, 2025
Also I minded how Bertric had laughed when I said that most likely Vikings had taken these vessels, and understood why. Heidrek saw that he had no chance if there was to be a fight, and acted accordingly.
Across the strait rose a thick smoke from the foot of the glen. Heidrek's folk were burning the wretched huts for sport. All the fisher people would have fled at their first coming. "They are busy now," said Bertric grimly, nodding toward the signs of pillage. "They will be here next." Now Gerda came with a little bundle, wrapped in her blue cloak.
Bertric roused me about that time. The wind had come, and the sky had clouded over, and the boat was slipping fast through the water, looking eastward indeed, but the wind headed us too closely for that to be of much use. It was blowing from the worst quarter for us, the southeast, and freshening.
Bertric would have me sleep now, and I did so, for I was fairly worn out, and then the weather grew wilder, until we were driving before a gale, and our hope of making even the Shetlands was gone. So we drove for two whole days until we had lost all reckoning, and the gale blew itself out.
Norse or Irish, they would help us, if we could reach them!" Bertric said never a word, but ran to the place whence he could look out to sea, and came back with a brighter face. "They are not Danish," he said. "I am sure thereof. And it is just a chance that we might reach them. If they see we are in need, there is another hope for us, for they will meet us, or heave to for us."
"See," said Bertric, "here is wind coming." There were thunder clouds working up from the north and east, and a haze was gathering overhead. Soon, in the stillness, the thunder rumbled across the sea, and the heavy drops of the first rain fell, bringing with them cold draughts of wind, which filled the sail for a moment, uselessly, and were gone.
He nodded and reached for a horn of ale, and sat down at the end of the high place, for at the time Bertric and I were talking with Eric's men, and trying to settle matters with them, for we could not let them go back to their master. One was a jarl from the south, and the others men of less note, and they had looked to gather men to Eric hence.
Bertric went to our halliards and lowered the sail as I luffed alongside, and then Dalfin had gripped the rail between two of the shining shields. There was no sea beyond a harmless ripple as yet, and we dropped aft to where a cleat was set for the boats on her quarter, and made fast.
I have been told of men who would try to win the treasure from a mound where one was buried, and died with fear of what he met with there." "Such an one deserved it," said Bertric quietly; "but we seek no treasure, nor would rob the dead. No doubt the wrath of Heaven lies hard on one who does so. Yet all this time we do not know if we are right or not." "Let it be," said I.
Father Cuthbert, seated in a corner near the Yule log, with his brother-in-law and the Etheling, forgot all his apprehensions, and shared in the universal joy around him; if his thoughts were sometimes with those who had once made Christmas bright to him if he thought of the bright-haired Bertric, who had been the soul of last Yuletide festivity at Aescendune, or of the desolated home there, he dismissed the subject from his mind at once, and suffered no hint to drop which could dim the mirth of his fellow guests.
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